Category Archives: Around Rancho Cucamonga

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To the question of where my ideas come from, sometimes they come from my nightstand. I was reading my annual Jack Smith book when a local reference therein sparked my curiosity. The result, a few weeks later, is Sunday’s column. Above and below, the covers of Henry Childs’ book, viewed at Chaffey College.

I was on the Chaffey College campus earlier this week, researching a column (coming Sunday), when a new and amusing art piece was pointed out to me. That kicks off Friday’s column, followed by more items for your post-Thanksgiving reading pleasure.

It had been a few months since I’d attended a Chino City Council meeting, and two years (!) since I’d been to a full-fledged Rancho Cucamonga City Council meeting. (Last year I did attend an afternoon workshop, though — as part of my effort to attend a council meeting in all nine of our cities.)

So I hit Chino on Tuesday and Rancho on Wednesday, finding enough material, and commentary, for Sunday’s column.

Diane Williams and Bill Alexander will leave the Rancho Cucamonga City Council after the November election. They’ve been in office a combined 54 years. I talk to them both for Wednesday’s column. (In a hometown touch, I ran into Williams at the drugstore and she gave me the story.)

The long-shuttered Pacific Electric train depot in Rancho Cucamonga is due to be repaired and reopened next summer, with the hope of having one or more tenants leasing space in the city-owned building. I offer an update and some history in Wednesday’s column.

My column late last month on the Base Line Road/15 Freeway interchange got a heavier than usual and polarized response, from which I excerpt the best. Kind of like that column item, this one is just for fun. Then there’s some Culture Corner items and a Vignette. That’s all in Wednesday’s column.

Alta Loma High School opened in 1963, with its initial three grade levels graduating in ’65, ’66 and ’67. When the organizer of the joint 50th reunion contacted us about coverage, the topic seemed like it might make for a good nostalgia column. What was Alta Loma like before the growth boom? I talk to some alums, one of them the mayor, and write about it in Sunday’s column.

Reader Mary Jo Kunkel submits the above photo, looking north from the corner of Archibald and Highland avenues in Rancho Cucamonga, and wonders what the detour sign is all about.

She doesn’t know what the detour was or why the face-down sign said the sidewalk is closed, although she wonders if the So Cal Gas leak in the area earlier this year was involved. “These have been on this corner for months and months,” Kunkel writes. “I’m hoping you will post this picture … so someone will come by and pick them up. Obviously no one is paying any attention to them but me.”

I happened to drive past Monday on my way to an appointment and the signs were still in the same position.

A view looking north on East Avenue in the left turn lane that seems to be on the wrong side of the freeway pylons.

I marvel at the improved but still confounding Base Line Road interchange in Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana in Wednesday’s column, while also tossing in a list of notable upcoming local concerts and a Valley Vignette. If you’ve had any experience with that interchange, past or present, I’d like to hear about it, in hopes that it isn’t just me.

Secrets Behind the Columns Dept.: I wrote the interchange item as long ago as May and revised it a few weeks later but, unsure if it was column-worthy, saved it for a rainy day. I’m on call for jury duty this week and don’t know from day to day if I’ll be working the next day or serving. Learning Monday night that I’d be working Tuesday, and thus would need to file a column by 1 p.m., I hauled the interchange item up from the depths.

Will I have a Friday column or a Sunday column? Only court administrators know for sure.